Great! Thanks for posting the menu. Fascinating. Are you using any native pork or chicken? Or importing from US or elsewhere? What's brisket go for there? (Maybe that will make me feel better about prices here).
I get all of my meat from Jason Morgan, The Meat Guy (themeatguy.jp), an American operating a shop out of Nagoya, Japan. His family owns Morgan Ranch in Nebraska, famous for American Wagyu beef, but I actually don't use any of that due to the high cost and added cook time. Whole brisket runs ¥1500/kg (about $7.00/lb).
I noted your prices are pretty similar to what we'd pay in the U.S. $8 for a burger and $18.00 or so for a plate aren't too different than what we'd pay.
I'm curious about your portion sizes. In the U.S., I'd be looking for probably about 1/3 lb of meat. Maybe up to 1/2 lb if someone wasn't measuring carefully. Something between 6 and 8 ounces. (200g)
I'm assuming, and maybe wrongly so, that portion sizes in Japan would be smaller than American portions. Correct?
Best of luck! Keep us posted on how it's going.
What I decided to do, for a couple of reasons, is sell my BBQ dinner as a 4 meat packaged "taste of America". Instead of offering each meat individually and having to constantly worry about running out of one meat and having a bunch of another left over, I opted to give a little of each. Since very few of the locals here have ever had true American smoked BBQ, I think it's a great way for them to get a good sampling of it.
I'm not sure what the aggregate weight is but it's pretty safe to assume that none of my Japanese customers will leave still hungry! If someone really prefers to have just ribs or just pulled pork, etc., they can get a basket meal.
I think the prices are very fair. Our margins are not high but since we're doing it out of our home and on a scale that we can manage, for the most part, by ourselves, we are able to reduce our overhead and hope to be able to make a reasonable profit. Of course we both are continuing to maintain our weekday jobs too so it will be a challenge for the foreseeable future, but that's the price we decided to pay to be able to create our own legacy instead of working for someone else's our whole lives.
Here's a photo a customer posted of their dinner (unfortunately it appears my wife failed to sauce the ribs before she served it, but we're still learning!):